Your Bible & You - Little Book Open.org

YOUR BIBLE AND YOU
T h e N e x t W o r l d E m p i r e
extent and universal supremacy. Instead, it was to be divided.
194
This all-important fact was repeated and emphasized in three different and
significant expressions:
“And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and
part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of
the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed
with miry clay.
“And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the
kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly brittle [margin].
“And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall
mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave
one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Daniel 2:41-43).
It is one of the most interesting, and indeed one of the most momentous,
facts of history, that when the Roman Empire, weakened by internal corruption,
was overrun by invading tribes from the north and east, it was divided
into 10 separate kingdoms. With the overthrow of the last of the emperors
in A.D. 476, and the establishment of the Herulian kingdom in Italy, the
fourth kingdom, which had been strong as iron and had broken in pieces and
subdued all kingdoms, was now broken in pieces itself.
Out of the welter of that destruction arose 10 kingdoms with some degree of
permanence – the Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, the Alemanni, the Lombards,
the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, the Suevi,
and the Heruli. These were forerunners and progenitors of the nations of
modern Europe.
All through the 15 centuries that have elapsed since the breakup of the
Roman Empire, despite the most desperate and determined efforts to bind
these parts together into one great whole again, the task has been found
impossible.
Boundaries have changed, of course, but the prophecy said nothing about
boundaries, or about the depredations of one nation upon another. Some
nations might expand and others shrink. The fragments of iron might penetrate
into the frontiers of the helpless clay. But the clay would remain, defying
the power of the iron to weld itself together again.
Seen in the light of history, illumined by the glow of a thousand battlefields,
where men by millions have died in fearful carnage, the ancient pronounce-